Derek Draper squares up to Guardian man

Derek Draper (pictured), the Labour insider who resigned from his well-paid lobbyist job in 1998 after the Observer accused him of fixing unparalleled access to new Labour ministers – he was famously recorded saying: "There are 17 people who count in this government. And to say I am intimate with every one of them is the understatement of the century" - has become embroiled in a new row with a journalist. This time it is about his professional qualifications.

Draper, who retrained as a therapist following his fall from grace, has been accused by the Guardian’s Westminster correspondent David Hencke of seeking to imply that his MA in clinical psychology was obtained at the world-renowned University of California, Berkeley, when in fact Draper attended the rather less glamorous Wright Institute in Berkeley.

What made matters worse is that Hencke made the claim in front of the British media and Draper's former boss, Lord (Peter) Mandelson, at the London launch on Thursday of Draper's much-vaunted LabourList website. Sparks flew. "Draper squared up to him, jabbing his finger, insisting he'd end Hencke's career," an onlooker told the Independent. "It was quite nasty."

Draper feels his ire was justified. "People can say what they like about my politics but if they question my professional reputation it is more serious," he said. "It made me angry and I didn't have a problem with showing it."

But which man is right? Draper’s website states: “I have an MA in clinical psychology and spent three years, in Berkeley, California, training full-time to be a psychotherapist.” Misleading, to say the least.